The accidental sinner: Deuteronomy 19

The accidental sinner.  The one who unintentionally becomes a murderer.

God tells the Israelites to set aside three cities of refuge, near enough so that: "the avenger of blood racing in hot-blooded pursuit might  (not) catch him since it’s such a long distance, and kill him even though he didn’t deserve it. It wasn’t his fault. There was no history of hatred between them (the murderer and his neighbour)."  God does this so that the Israelites don't "pollute it with innocent blood and bring bloodguilt upon (them)selves."

God is merciful.  I do well to remember this, I who do not 'believe' in accidental sinner. Brought up to take responsibility for my actions, I have an over-developed sense of guilt when my actions unintentionally go wrong. Guilt which has, over the years, fuelled feelings of shame and blame.  And it is worth, hear, referencing Brene Brown's inspiring work on shame and blame and her encouragement to be vulnerable. As I look at her work, I am drawn to this blog with inspiring quotes from her:
"Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light. ~Brené Brown

2. Shame is the most powerful, master emotion. It’s the fear that we’re not good enough. ~ Brené Brown

3. I don’t have to chase extraordinary moments to find happiness – it’s right in front of me if I’m paying attention and practicing gratitude. ~ Brené Brown

4. A deep sense of love and belonging is an irreducible need of all people. We are biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually wired to love, to be loved, and to belong. When those needs are not met, we don’t function as we were meant to. We break. We fall apart. We numb. We ache. We hurt others. We get sick. ~ Brené Brown

5. Through my research, I found that vulnerability is the glue that holds relationships together. It’s the magic sauce. ~ Brené Brown

6. Shame, blame, disrespect, betrayal, and the withholding of affection damage the roots from which love grows. Love can only survive these injuries if they are acknowledged, healed and rare. ~ Brené Brown

7. We cannot selectively numb emotions, when we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions. ~ Brené Brown

8. Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen. ~ Brené Brown

9. When you get to a place where you understand that love and belonging, your worthiness, is a birthright and not something you have to earn, anything is possible. ~ Brené Brown

10. If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can’t survive. ~ Brené Brown

11. Normally, when someone we love is turning away from a struggle, we self-protect by also turning away. That’s definitely my first response. I think change is more likely to happen if both partners have common language and a shared lens to see problems. ~ Brené Brown

12. As a shame researcher, I know that the very best thing to do in the midst of a shame attack is totally counterintuitive: Practice courage and reach out! ~ Brené Brown

13. Vulnerability is about showing up and being seen. It’s tough to do that when we’re terrified about what people might see or think. ~ Brené Brown

14. When the people we love stop paying attention, trust begins to slip away and hurt starts seeping in. ~ Brené Brown

15. First and foremost, we need to be the adults we want our children to be. We should watch our own gossiping and anger. We should model the kindness we want to see. ~ Brené Brown

16. Guilt is just as powerful, but its influence is positive, while shame’s is destructive. Shame erodes our courage and fuels disengagement. ~ Brené Brown

17. Men walk this tightrope where any sign of weakness illicits shame, and so they’re afraid to make themselves vulnerable for fear of looking weak. ~ Brené Brown

18. I’m just going to say it: I’m pro-guilt. Guilt is good. Guilt helps us stay on track because it’s about our behavior. It occurs when we compare something we’ve done – or failed to do – with our personal values. ~ Brené Brown

19. Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change. ~ Brené Brown

20. I’ve learned that men and women who are living wholehearted lives really allow themselves to soften into joy and happiness. They allow themselves to experience it. ~ Brené Brown

21. The dark does not destroy the light; it defines it. It’s our fear of the dark that casts our joy into the shadows. ~ Brené Brown

22. If we share our shame story with the wrong person, they can easily become one more piece of flying debris in an already dangerous storm. ~ Brené Brown

23. In my research, I’ve interviewed a lot of people who never fit in, who are what you might call ‘different’: scientists, artists, thinkers. And if you drop down deep into their work and who they are, there is a tremendous amount of self-acceptance. ~ Brené Brown

24. If you trade your authenticity for safety, you may experience the following: anxiety, depression, eating disorders, addiction, rage, blame, resentment, and inexplicable grief. ~ Brené Brown

25. Spirituality is recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to each other by a power greater than all of us, and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounded in love and compassion. Practicing spirituality brings a sense of perspective, meaning and purpose to our lives. ~ Brené Brown

Let’s push past what is holding us back and live a good life."

All helpful and true and I rejoice that Jesus has forgiven me EVERYTHING. The unintentional sins AND the intentional ones.

And yet - God protects his people who live together in society here on earth. He gives clear instructions for dealing with the intentional sinner, the murderer who plans and plots and brutally carries out harm to others.  They are to be pursued and brought to justice, convicted by the words of at least two or three truthful witnesses. There is to be no summary justice on the word of one accuser.

God is good. He loves us all, bringing order out of sin's chaos and ensuring with his words at the end of the chapter that even the intentional sinner is to be treated with dignity and truth.

God is good. He loves us all.

Advent begins

Waiting: overcoming shame...

In these first days of our Advent season, I read of the origins of Jesus Christ, of how he was
"David’s son, Abraham’s son:Abraham had Isaac, Isaac had Jacob, Jacob had Judah and his brothers, Judah had Perez and Zerah (the mother was Tamar), Perez had Hezron, Hezron had Aram..."

All the way down to "Joseph, Mary’s husband, the Mary who gave birth to Jesus, the Jesus who was called Christ."

All the way down to Joseph. Who was not Jesus' father.

So, as scholars pored the genealogies, the generations upon generations, looking at David's progeny, did it ever cross their minds that the coming King would not be kingly, as they imagined? Did they look at abilities and prowess, at connection and dedication, wondering who would be that King to succeed their own king David?

Did any of them ever have an inkling?

As I consider Jesus's 'noble' birth, traced all the way back to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, I see something less savoury in Jacob's sons. Judah.

Judah, who collaborated and connived with his brothers to eliminate his younger brother Joseph.
Judah, who wanted his brother dead and gone from the family.
Judah, who, even so, set great store by family and sold his brother rather than killing him.
Judah, who set great store by family and sold his brother into the living death of slavery.
Judah, who set great store by family, and wanted his widowed daughter-in-law to sleep with her brother-in-law and so have children 'for' his dead son.
Judah, who slept with a prostitute - or so he thought. Was he married? Was it only this one time? I wouldn't think so. The woman was covered with a veil, disguised, so he could hardly have been overwhelmed by her beauty.
Judah, who slept with his own widowed daughter-in-law, Tamar, after neglecting to provide another husband for her.
Judah, the man who wouldn't even pay for his favours directly, but got a friend to do it for him.
Judah, the callous and judgemental, who wanted his pregnant daughter-in-law burned to death for her adultery.
Judah, who fathered twins with Tamar, the second of whom was born first and who took the kingly line down to Jesus.

And what of Tamar? A woman given first to one man, then, when he died, his brother. A woman who took desperate measures to become a mother. A cunning woman, who engineered sex with her father-in-law so that her child/children would remain in the family. A clever woman who, in this way, protected herself from punishment and death.

God took the jealous, the callous, the harsh, the immoral, the judgemental Judah and included him in Jesus' ancestors.
God took the broken, the powerless, the rejected, the neglected, the shamed, the desperate Tamar and included her in Jesus' ancestors.

And this was not all. We are influenced by genes and upbringing, influenced (but not defined) by our ancestry. We read, in great men's obituaries, of wonderfully gifted and great ancestors whose inheritance has helped shape their progeny. When we look at the genealogy of Jesus, he turns this upside down.  Jesus' family story shouts of immorality, depravity, selfishness and shame.

Jesse, who ignored and neglected his best son, David.
David - wonderful man of God, yet a murderer and adulterer also.
Solomon - a wise yet licentious king who squandered his inheritance on good living and left a divided kingdom as his legacy.
Jehoiachin (Jeconiah), who was king of Israel for only three months before he was deposed by King Nebuchadnezzar, captured and taken in abject slavery like an animal, to a foreign country. He ended his days there, 'freed' from prison only after 37 years, spending the rest of his life under the king's eye.

The rest of the list in Matthew 1, regardless of whether kings are included,  shouts of obscurity.

Jesus brings us morality, righteous living, unselfishness and GRACE.

God INCLUDES us, in our shame and disgrace, in his glorious family. Perhaps, this Christmas, it is time to give ourselves a gift.  The gift of giving ourselves "a life no longer controlled by the shame of the past.", 
Jesus has redeemed us, given us great worth and value. We can accept that gift in accepting freedom for ourselves.

One such woman who did this was Elizabeth. She is the first woman we read about in Luke's account of the birth of Jesus. She derived great honour from HER ancestry - she was descended from one of Aaron's daughters - yet she was childless. Barren. This was the ultimate disgrace. Childlessness was considered a curse from God for guilt and wrongdoing, a punishment for unfaithfulness. Luke tells us that Elizabeth could never conceive and could not have children. Surely Elizabeth should have been a bitter, angry woman who cursed her fate, always craving for that which she could not have.

Yet she was not. Elizabeth and Zechariah, a temple priest, (also descended from the priestly line) lived "honorably before God, careful in keeping to the ways of the commandments and enjoying a clear conscience before God."

The name Zechariah means "he who remembers Jehovah,” or, perhaps, “he whom Jehovah remembers,” Elisabeth means "my god is my oath" or "devoted to God".

Indeed. These wonderful, godly people were to become parents of John the Baptist, he in turn so devoted to God that he became a prophet, living of God's sustenance in the desert, prophesying and preaching repentance to prepare the heart of God's people for the coming Messiah. The contrast of these quiet, good lives in the midst of corrupt, evil times - 'the time of Herod' - shines out. History has shown how pivotal they were; but it would not have felt like that to them. They could not have dreamed, in the middle of their humdrum daily devotion, of the events that would come. Least of all a miraculous - because it was, indeed, a miracle that Elisabeth became pregnant - conception.

Shame

"Afterward Mordecai returned to the palace gate, but Haman hurried home dejected and completely humiliated.

When Haman told his wife, Zeresh, and all his friends what had happened, his wise advisers and his wife said, “Since Mordecai—this man who has humiliated you—is of Jewish birth, you will never succeed in your plans against him. It will be fatal to continue opposing him.”

While they were still talking, the king’s eunuchs arrived and quickly took Haman to the banquet Esther had prepared." Esther 6:12 - 14

So Mordecai, who had been honoured in the highest way imaginable, just returned to his normal duties at the palace gate. He did not assume that he was now elevated to position of court favourite or that other honours would come his way. Indeed, he must have been surprised to have had his deeds recognised after such a long gap.

And Haman is hugely embarrassed. He doesn't even get much consolation from his family and friends, apart from advice to recognize the inevitable: that he won't win against Mordecai. They now recognise the power of God, Yahweh, the God of the Jews. This is confirmed by the 'wise advisers' - the Magi.  (And I wonder: the wise men from 'the East', were they also from Persia, and had they also studied and learned about the God of the captured Jews? Did they know the lineage of the king they were seeking?)

And now, events start to happen at speed: Haman has not had time to even reconcile events in his mind, let alone get over his disappointment, before he is summoned 'quickly' to Esther's second banquet...

Perhaps, even now, he is plotting a way to elevate himself and get Mordecai ignored and safely relegated to obscurity before the edict to annihilate the Jews comes into force. Or is he afraid that the king will realise Mordecai is a Jew and have the order cancelled because Mordecai's service has been recognised and honoured? Perhaps he thinks the king won't even care. 

Or is there dread in Haman's heart on hearing the words of his 'wise advisers' that his plans are doomed to fail: that the God whom Mordecai worships is bent on saving the Jews, his people? Yahweh has said: "I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt." Is Haman's pride still carrying him, or have cracks begun to appear in the flimsy foundations on which he has built his life?